Related papers: Tracing the dynamical and structural complexity of…
The central regions of galaxies show the presence of massive black holes and/or dense stellar systems. The question about their modes of formation is still under debate. A likely explanation of the formation of the central dense stellar…
It is widely accepted that within the framework of LCDM a significant fraction of giant-disk galaxies has recently experienced a violent galactic merger. We present numerical simulations of such major mergers of gas-rich pure disk galaxies,…
This thesis makes use of the imaging data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) and the Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS) field. We provide…
The centre of the Milky Way is occupied by a nuclear star cluster, which contains the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The cluster is embedded in the larger surrounding nuclear stellar disc. These three components dominate the mass budget of…
We use high resolution simulations to study the formation and distribution of galaxies within a cluster which forms hierarchically. We follow both dark matter and baryonic gas which is subject to thermal pressure, shocks and radiative…
In the era of precision cosmology and ever-improving cosmological simulations, a better understanding of different galaxy components such as bulges and discs will give us new insight into galactic formation and evolution. Based on the fact…
A large fraction of bulgeless disk galaxies contain young compact stellar systems at their centers, in spite of the local gravitational stability of these disks. We evaluate two contrasting hypotheses for the origin of the nuclear star…
Galaxy evolution is in transition from an early universe dominated by hierarchical clustering to a future dominated by secular processes. These result from interactions involving collective phenomena such as bars, oval disks, spiral…
Gas-rich disks in the early universe are highly turbulent and have giant star-forming clumps. Models suggest the clumps form by gravitational instabilities, and if they resist disruption by star formation, then they interact, lose angular…
We present first results concerning the metallicities and stellar populations of galaxies formed in a cosmologically motivated simulation. The calculations include dark matter, gas dynamics, radiation processes, star formation, supernovae…
We use numerical simulations to examine the structure of merger remnants resulting from collisions of gas-rich spiral galaxies. When the gas fraction of the progenitors is small, the remnants structurally and kinematically resemble…
We investigate the evolution of star-forming gas-rich disks, using a 3D chemodynamical model including a dark halo, stars, and a two-phase interstellar medium with feedback processes from the stars. We show that galaxy evolution proceeds…
The stellar populations in the inner kiloparsecs of the Milky Way (MW) show complex kinematical and chemical structures. The origin and evolution of these structures is still under debate. Here we study the central region of a fully…
We review internal processes of secular evolution in galaxy disks, concentrating on the buildup of dense central features that look like classical, merger-built bulges but that were made slowly out of disk gas. We call these pseudobulges.…
The formation sequence of bulges and disks in late-type galaxies (LTGs) remains debated. While some theories suggest bulges form before disks, others propose the reverse. To address this, we analyze a bulge+disk decomposition catalog from…
A theory is developed for the dynamics of eccentric perturbations $[\propto \exp(\pm i\phi)]$ of a disk galaxy residing in a spherical dark matter halo and including a spherical bulge component. The disk is represented as a large number $N$…
I use Spitzer 3.6-8.0 \mu m color profiles to compare the radial structure of star formation in pseudobulges and classical bulges. Pseudobulges are ``bulges'' which form through secular evolution, rather than mergers. In this study,…
We consider the possibility that an infalling bulge core or stellar cluster could form an eccentric disk, following tidal disruption by a massive black hole in the center of a galaxy. As a function of central black hole mass, we constrain…
We present photometric and morphological analyses of nuclear star clusters (NSCs) -- very dense, massive star clusters present in the central regions of most galaxies -- in a sample of 33 massive disk galaxies within 20 Mpc, part of the…
A key feature of a large population of low-mass, late-type disk galaxies are star-forming disks with exponential light distributions. They are typically also associated with thin and flat morphologies, blue colors, and dynamically cold…